"She's powerful purty, ain't she, paw! Gosh, I never seen a woman in britches before. Did yu? Paw! She kin ride in my wagon, paw. Be yu goin' to take her on, paw? If yu be, I got room." "Go. Tend to your stock and think of other things," boomed his father. "Remember that the Scriptures say, beware of the scarlet woman." Daniel galloped away, whooping like an idiot. "Wall, there she is," my friend Jenks remarked non-committally. "What next'll happen, we'll see in the mornin'. Either she goes on or she goes back. I don't claim to read Mormon sign, myself. But she had me jumpin' sideways, for a spell. So did that young whelp." There was some talk, idle yet not offensive. The men appeared rather in a judicial frame of mind: laid a few bets upon whether her husband would turn up, in sober fashion nodded their heads over the hope that he had been "properly pinked," all in all sided with her, while admiring her pluck roundly denied responsibility for women in general, and genially but cautiously twitted Mr. Jenks and me upon our alleged implication in the affair. Darkness, still and chill, had settled over the desert--the only discernible horizon the glow of Benton, down the railroad track. The ashes of final pipes were rapped out upon our boot soles. Our group dispersed, each man to his blanket under the wagons or in the open. "Wall," friend Jenks again broadly uttered, in last words as he turned over with a grunt, for easier posture, near me, "hooray! If it simmers down to you and Dan'l, I'll be there." With that enigmatical comment he was silent save for stertorous breathing. Vaguely cogitating over his promise I lay, toes and face up, staring at the bright stars; perplexed more and more over the immediate events of the future, warmly conscious of her astonishing proximity in this very train, prickled by the hope that she would continue with us, irritated by the various assumptions of Daniel, and somehow not at all adverse to the memory of her in "britches." That phase of the matter seemed to have affected Daniel and me similarly. Under his hide he was human. CHAPTER XII DANIEL TAKES POSSESSION I was more than ever convinced of her wisdom in choice of garb when in early morning I glimpsed her with the two other women at the Adams fire; for, bright-haired and small, she had been sorrily dulled by the plain ill-fitting waist and long shapeless skirt in one garment, as adopted by the feminine contingent of the train. In her particular case these were worse fitting and longer than common--an artifice that certainly snuffed a portion of her charms for Gentile and Mormon eyes alike. What further disposition of her was to be made we might not yet know. We all kept to our own tasks and our own fires, with the exception that Daniel gawked and strutted in the manner of a silly gander, and made frequent errands to his father's household.